The soundtrack to the film, Out of Africa, co-starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep was a firm favourite of my father.
He used to conduct the score as he glided across the living room with a misty look about his pale, blue eyes. For him, as for me, Africa held a certain romanticism.
My idea of Africa, from as early as I can remember, was based on two of our family’s favourite series and films of the time: Born Free and Zulu, the latter being compulsory family viewing every Christmas since 1973.
We finally decided, in my fifty-third year, to fulfil a lifelong dream and book a holiday to South Africa.
Unlike Michelle, who likes to look online at where we are staying, the facilities and what’s on the menu before we get there, I prefer to retain a little mystery and see how it all pans out.
“What are you most looking forward to seeing?“ she asked.
“Everything,” I said, “though I do have a soft spot for the Eland.”
I remembered pestering the life out of my mother for a plastic Eland toy as a boy. It is the largest of all Antelope and when it comes to African wildlife, bigger means better to a boy of seven.
“They’ve got good reviews in our hotel restaurant when we get to Cape Town,” she added. “Shall I read you the menu?”
I shot one of my special looks over the rims of imaginary spectacles and she changed the subject, knowing well my feelings on over-planning. I’m sure I can’t be the only man to have noticed this tendency in the opposite sex?
Our African Safari began at Oliver Tambo airport in Johannesburg with a long drive down to the town of Hazyview in the Kruger National Park.
First across to Pretoria, through wide avenues of Lilac Jacaranda trees and then down along the long, straight highways from Highveld to low.
Our 7-seater Toyota had all the handling of a roller-skate and it took concentration and effort to keep it on the road as occasional gusty winds crossed the wide tracts of land. It was hot too and the air conditioning was at full blast, which in competition with the noisy engine made conversation an effort. The ladies gave it a jolly good go though, for we were a party of four:
Our friends Pete and Sue, joining us for the first leg of our trip.
We were safari-bound on the N4 motorway to Nelspruit and then Hazyview, on the edge of the Kruger National Park. The untamed country; the dark continent I had waited a lifetime to see through the lens of my own eyes.
We passed a hillside with one of the most famous bible verses- John 3:16 – carved into its slope in huge white letters.
“For God so loved the world ..” it begins;
I happen to think it is worth saving too.
The road was straight as far as the eye can see and even as we neared our destination, I was surprised at the level of human activity and development on either side. Sure, there were wide empty spaces but there were also orange groves and tree plantations, dusty mine workings and even the odd Wimpy grill or Woolworths stores to add to my vague feelings of nostalgia for the 1970s. If the past is another country, then it must be South Africa, I thought.
As we neared Hazyview it was already dark and the lights of this rapidly growing town shone brightly on the hillside.
I went to bed that night with only a vague appreciation of my surroundings. I had stared out into the pitch darkness from the balcony of our lodge and heard the conversation of owls between nearby trees, the raucous hum of insects and frogs and the rushing Sabe river. Even dog-tiredness couldn’t tame my imagination.
I slept a dreamless sleep and at first daylight, leapt out of bed to return to the balcony to see what my ears and imagination had promised.
I immediately noticed some sort of dung covering the floor and a wooden table and looked up to the thatched eaves. Four black, beady, expressionless eyes belonging to two fruit bats stared back at me. They both dropped from their roost and flapped over my head and up into the trees.
A neatly grazed lawn led up to the riverbank, which was closer than I had imagined. A triangular sign depicting a crocodile and a hippo warned against bathing and gave further written explanation, as if it were necessary, to include warning of a rather nasty parasitic worm called Bilharzia that might do the job if the wild animals didn’t put you off.
Beyond was a steep valley between three intersecting hills, covered in woodland.
I heard the hollow bells of domestic cattle being driven, unseen, on the opposite side of the river. It was all that I had hoped for.
Big Five Before Breakfast
The next day alarm-clocks sounded early as we readied ourselves in the pre-dawn darkness. Our guide, Reply, was waiting outside, cheerful and bright for the hour, as he helped us into the modified and open Landrover. The Kruger National Park, was a windy, twenty minute ride from our lodge.
Occupying an area the size of Wales, the Park was the brainchild of its namesake Paul Kruger, who first opened it to tourists in 1927 for the fee of one pound. Thankfully, he had the foresight to realise something needed to be done to preserve the amazing wildlife in South Africa, which might otherwise be completely destroyed for the next generations by over hunting, habitat loss and poaching.
Life sentences for poachers hasn’t deterred them and in 2018 in South Africa alone, 769 Rhinos were poached for the lucrative Chinese medicine market.
Apparently, poaching has stepped up several gears during the coronavirus pandemic, as tourism has completely dried up.
After being chastised in the newsprint for my excessive carbon footprint, by the private-jet-owning, tax-haven dwelling, rubber-burning Formula-1 racing driver, Lewis Hamilton, I had wondered whether I ought to come here at all. But it was abundantly obvious that the place, and its wonderful diversity of wildlife, still survives because of tourists like me.
The sun was rising as we entered the gates and we began scanning in every direction for the first sighting.
It happened to be a group of three Impala, browsing near the side of the road.
“McDonald’s! Fast-food of the bush,” Reply told us with a big grin, pointing out the M-shaped markings on their rumps. Only twenty-per-cent make it to adulthood.
Then, Michelle’s favourite, the graceful Giraffe with the ubiquitous Oxpecker bird riding on his back and cleaning him of parasites. The perfect example of symbiotic relationship: You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
Next a single, old male buffalo. “A widow-maker!” said Reply, clicking his tongue; “Very dangerous on his own.”
I know a few people like that; they get a bit grumpy when there’s no one else to check their behaviour.
We bumped,rattled and jerked along the network of rough tracks and came beside a drying lake, next to the bone dry river beds that sometimes feed it. There has been too little rain this year and the constant fight for survival is just a little harder. Reply points out a pair of African Fish Eagles, the so-called ‘voice of Africa’.
Our first sighting of the wonderful and wise and always awe-inspiring Elephant was on the far side of the lake. We cooed our appreciation and moved on, eyes peeled and eager for more.
Reply evidently knew his stuff and where to find it.
He brought the Landrover to a sudden halt and reversed. We looked at one another quizzically, but following his downward pointed finger into a culvert under the road, we saw a mother Hyena, feeding two cubs. She merely raised her head and flicked her ears and looked away, showing a complete lack of concern at our close presence. What a treat!
“One of the ugly five,” Reply added with another broad smile.
Their bite force has been measured at 1100 pounds per square inch; more powerful than Lions and Tigers.
We rapidly ticked off other species: Kudu; Yellow Billed Hornbill (Zazu in The Lion King); Three warthogs, characteristically kneeling to eat- their necks are so thick they can’t stoop down to eat without kneeling – and the lone-ranger steenbok; smallest of the antelope.
We stopped again next to a gang of four large male buffalo, who appeared to be conspiring in a clearing shaded by trees. I didn’t see any bike-sheds, but if there were any they were smoking behind them, such was their demeanour.
Reply seemed to be searching beyond them to work out what was going on. Another truck of tourists came by and stopped briefly before moving on but Reply sensed drama and we remained.
A mother and calf Elephant moved up the bank next to them and the mother told the gang off with a trumpet and wave of the trunk and they sheepishly shuffled out of the way, trying not to lose their cool.
“The Elephant is the only thing they’ve scared of,” Reply told us. He moved the Landrover forward about 20 yards still looking into the bush.
“Ahh, I thought so. Look! mating Lions,” he declared triumphantly, justifying his bushcraft.
It was as if he had shouted “camera, action!”
We gawped at the two lions just behind the bushes near to us.
The male was intent on mating but was wary of the nearby buffalo gang, looking behind him in their direction. He clearly had something of a dilemma.
The gang knew what the lions were up to and were waiting for their moment. They stubbed out their fags, ready for business.
Then a sudden clatter of movement and the Buffalo gang made their charge. Both lions took off, running right past us onto the road in full flight.
My heart pounded and I was, in that moment, a boy of seven again. We moved quickly too, so as not to get caught up in the chase.
Reply then found an old Hippo in a bright green pool of water.
Once defeated by a stronger male he would never return to the pod again and I felt a tinge of sadness at his lonely, pea-green exile. That’s the harsh reality of the natural world. It is only human society that can choose to be different.
We rattled along in the old Landrover and each sighting was different: A trio of vultures hung from a leopard kill, stashed in a tree, taking it in turns to flap and tear at the rotting meat.
Pete really wanted to see the Leopard as he had been twice before and failed to see one.
We stopped again and a herd of Elephant crossed the road close behind us.
Mothers with their young calves, playful and inquisitive teenagers, the magnificent old Matriarch and a large Bull.
Reply watched closely, ready to move if he objected to our presence.
We held our breath as he passed within an Elephants length of the truck, turned to look at us, and with a warning flap of his giant ears and a dismissive wave of his trunk, he decided we posed no threat, turned away and carried on.
Elephants can be very destructive and the surrounding landscape was bare with scattered trees, felled, splintered and stripped of their bark giving the appearance of an arid Somme.
Reply told us that when he was a small boy and had any kind of stomach complaint, his mother would make him drink of strained elephant dung. It always did the trick, he said.
Whether it was the medicinal qualities of different tree barks or the repulsive thought of drinking any more of the stuff, he couldn’t say.
You name it, we saw it on that first drive: From the burrows dug by the nocturnal Aardvark to the cautious, jumpy Zebra and everything in between.
We all became expert spotters after a while, under the guidance of our teacher, Reply, calling out sightings near an far.
I looked at my watch and it was still only 8am as we headed for breakfast.
Then, once more we came to a juddering halt and Reply threw the truck into reverse.
We searched the scrub but could see nothing.
Reply, pointed towards a large grey rocky outcrop in the middle distance and uttered the word we all wanted to hear: “Leopard!”
He was a large male and the most handsome of big cats. Initially lying down, he must have felt our eyes on him and rose lazily to his feet, turning his flank to us and showing the long arc of his tail. He moved slowly across the rock flexing powerful shoulders and then vanished into the brush.
These beasts have been around since the early Pleistocene 600,000 years ago, yet they too have been brought to the brink of extinction by habitat loss and illegal hunting for body parts, again for the Chinese medicine market.
I’m glad to say that he was the first of several and much closer encounters on our trip; I’ll tell you more about that later.
As we tucked into our eggs and bacon, our broad grins told the story of that marvellous and magical morning:
We had seen the big five before breakfast and Africa was starting to get under my skin; just as It always does, so I’m told.